Johann Sebastien Bach

Johann Sebastien Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

  Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist. His works and contributions to music during his time brought together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to it’s fullest maturity. His family history is rooted in music and its no wonder Bach turned out to be so musically gifted. Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 in Eisenach, Saxe-Eisenach.His parents were Johann Ambrosious Bach , who was the director of the town’s musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. His father taught him to play violin and harpsichord.[5] His uncles were all professional musicians, whose posts ranged from church organists and court chamber musicians to composers. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach (1645–93), introduced him to the art of organ playing. Bach later revealed that he was very proud of his family’s musical heritage and he wrote a genealogy about it. At the age of 14, Bach, along with his older school friend George Erdmann, was awarded a choral scholarship to study at the prestigious St. Michael's School in Lüneburg in the Principality of Lüneburg. His two years there appear to have been critical in exposing him to a wider facet of European culture. It was at this school that Bach greatly increased his knowledge and skills in music.

  In January 1703, shortly after graduating from St. Michael's and after having failed an audition for the post of organist at Sangerhausen, Bach gained an appointment as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst in Weimar. After remaining at Weimar for seven months, his reputation as a great keyboardist greatly spread. It became so well known that Bach was given yet another job as an organist at St. Boniface's Church in Arnstadt. At this time, Bach was embarking on the composition of organ preludes; these works, in the North German tradition of virtuosic, improvisatory preludes, already showed tight motivic control (in which a...